SideQuest recently closed a $12 million Series A round led by GV, Google’s venture capital arm. SideQuest primarily creates an alternative app store for Meta’s Quest VR headset, which allows developers to publish and sell experimental games that may not initially comply with Meta’s strict store approval process.
SideQuest launched its app store in 2019 after the initial launch of the Oculus Quest, which was co-founded by husband and wife Shane and Orla Harris. Over the past few years, the pair have been simplifying the app’s user experience, while building a more mature starting point for VR game developers to reach out to the early user community and get feedback on the official store before graduation.
A handful of games have taken that leap from SideQuest’s experimental weapon, including VR basketball app Gym Class, which received funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator earlier this year.
The founders of SideQuest have long been looking for ways to support VR game development. Early investment by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey gave the couple a chance to explore how to turn their experiment into a company. While the Harrises have a lot to say about Meta’s VR investment, they’re concerned about the virtual reality industry’s lack of platform diversity and hope more open source projects like theirs can help.
